Santo Domingo.- Desertification directly or indirectly affects around five million Dominicans, mainly in the Southwest, Northwest and provinces, and part of the Eastern plain, according to the latest studies on the Dominican Republic.

The process is being analyzed in the Regional Conference Against Desertification in Central America and the Caribbean, inaugurated in Barahona by Environment minister Jaime David Fernandez Mirabal, and the organizations in the Technical Inter-institutional Group (GTI) and is among the regional focal points of the UN’s Convention Against Desertification and Drought (CNULD), as part of the world day celebrations on to the topic.

“Desertification is a struggle of contrasts and phenomena like climatic change which produce periods of drought followed by strong rains that increases the vulnerability to the natural disasters,” Fernandez Mirabal said.

The said the country needs a law to assure that no less than 20% of the resources that generate the use of water in productive lands are returned to the river basins and invested in reforestation.

In that regard, the vice minister for Soils and Waters, Manuel Serrano, affirmed that the agency conducts projects to halt the desertification and drought which threaten the country, and cited the reforestation Plan Quisqueya Verde as an example.

He said the problem affects not only Dominican Republic, but everybody, for the misuse of soils.